Now, a Road Less Traveled at Zion Park

In recent years, the route through the stunning red cliffs of Zion Canyon has become a big, beautiful parking lot, filled with tour buses, double-parked motor homes and bad tempers.

Not anymore.

In an attempt to restore the peace and quiet that gave Zion its name, the national park on Tuesday became the first outside Alaska to ban nearly all cars from its most popular section.

In most cases, tourists must now take shuttles from the new visitor center to travel up the canyon.

For the first time in years Tuesday, it was easy to slow down and experience the park--to hear the sound of the Virgin River and even catch the buzz of a hummingbird that stopped to investigate one shuttle stop.

Officials at crowded national parks across the country said it could be a glimpse of the future.

“I think it would be safe to say that in 10 or 20 years a number of parks may have systems” like this, said National Park Service spokeswoman Carol Anthony. “Visitation to the national parks has just been increasing at a phenomenal rate, and I think that we’re finally just facing the issue, to be quite frank.”

In Zion, transportation first became a hot topic in 1977, when the park--designed to handle about a million people a year--had 1.4 million visitors. A master plan written that year declared parking demand would soon outstrip the supply.

The park now gets an estimated 2.5 million visitors each year. In the peak season of April through October, that translates to an average of 2,000 cars and 20 tour buses a day. On a busy holiday weekend, as many as 3,000 vehicles may visit the narrow, six-mile canyon in a day--all of them trying to squeeze into 450 parking spaces.

“Frayed tempers, people hollering at each other, people double- and triple-parked, destroying the vegetation,” said Zion spokesman Denny Davies. “We just decided that one of the criterion we wanted was to restore this place to peace and quiet.”

One option was voluntary shuttles, like those running at several national parks. But Zion officials worried too few people would leave their cars behind.

They also considered widening the road or adding more parking lots.

“But one of the primary reasons that any national park has been established is to preserve and protect the resources that are there,” Davies said. “So if you start carving away the hillside to make parking lots, you’re going at cross purposes.”

Officials decided on mandatory, propane-powered shuttles from the visitor center to the end of the six-mile road, with seven stops in between. Other shuttles will loop through the town of Springdale, at the park’s entrance, picking up visitors and dropping them at the visitor center.

The car ban is not absolute. Those driving through the park on State Route 9 will still be able to use the first couple of miles of the canyon road. Visitors with reservations at the Zion Park Lodge will receive parking passes, and some special permits for rock climbers and back-country campers will be granted.

Managers at Yosemite and the south rim of the Grand Canyon have been considering similar transit plans for years. But Zion, with its smaller scale and seven-month high season, leapfrogged over those better-known parks, where shuttles should be up and running in two years.

One thing officials want to see is how the $28-million system goes over with the public. On Tuesday, most shuttle riders--even those surprised to find they couldn’t drive their car into Zion Canyon--said they could see the need for a transit system.

But as the buses fell behind schedule, there were more than a few complaints.

“Instead of putting the money into all these shuttles and a big old visitors center, put the money into a parking lot!” said Kimberly Kalbfleisch of Phoenix.

“We have limited time for vacation, and we don’t want to spend our time waiting for a shuttle. We could have been there in five minutes in our car, gone on our hike and gone on our way.”